The present invention relates to document copying devices and particularly to sheet-feeding mechanism for advancing, seriatim, the individual sheets from a stack of sheets to be copied.
The stack of sheets is placed on a holder, and the mechanism automatically feeds the bottom-most sheet onto the copier, on demand, as the copier operates.
In the past, sheet-feeding mechanisms have generally been large, bulky, and heavy, supported to one side of the copying surface on or adjacent the frame of the copier, with complicated drive-mechanism to interact between the sheet-feeder and the copier when the sheet-to-be-copied is advanced to the copy position of the copier.
This application is one of a group of four simultaneously filed: Ser. No. 800,756 now U.S. Pat. No. 4,632,376; Ser. No. 800,757 now U.S. Pat. No. 4,674,738; Ser. No. 800,962 abandoned in favor of Ser. No. 078,456 now abandoned, and Ser. No. 800,758 abandoned in favor of the present application. Applicant has also filed corresponding applications in Japan, Korea, Taiwan and the European Patent Office. The European application was published June 3, 1987 as No. 224,171A.